


all the grain of babylon

by krynon



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Alien Language, Fighting, Gen, Mind Control, Torture, War, Yoglabs, flux - Freeform, slime!Alsmiffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-31 13:58:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3980668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krynon/pseuds/krynon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The machines come in the dead of night, and somehow all her friends are gone.<br/>So Nano starts a war.<br/>As Xephos and Ridge tear themselves apart, Nano decides she wants to win it.<br/>Rescue her friends, end the war, kill one or both of the Gods- it's a tall order.<br/>Nano decides she wants to win it very much.</p><p>Xephos almost grovels at Ridge's booted feet, clutching at the dust-ridden ground.<br/>She can see the god clenching his fists, and the pain that shudders through Xephos is not imagined; he's gritting his teeth even as she watches. The sound he's making under Ridge's iron grip is taught with clicks and whirrs, and the normally bright light from his eyes is dimmed and hazy and dripping with something- a terrified, many-legged thing she remembers from hiding under beds when hissing beasts drew near.<br/>“One second, Nano.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the grain of babylon

**Author's Note:**

> Warning! TW for graphic depictions of torture, violence, mind control, implied character death, and a whole lot of pain.
> 
> Not beta read- if anyone notices anything, drop me a comment!

(They all stand in a huge room, filled with the empty docking stations of a thousand robots, and any sound reverberates in a judder through the whole space. Her footsteps are earthquakes, not helped by the ceiling hanging so far away it feels as if darkness is waiting to fall on her- they are in YogLabs, many, many floors above a lost battle. Goosebumps rise on her skin, because she lost her war, and she was wrong.)

 

There's a sharp jolt of sound, and the realisation of quite who's in control of the situation hits her like a gilded brick.

Here's a hint- it's not her.

 

And all this time she'd thought it would be Xephos.

 

(Xephos usually stands as if he is absolutely responsible for anything that is thrown at him. But he's not. Regrets threaten to topple her- the war is a mass of past-tense, now, but  so many died and now she knows that he's not responsible...)

  


Ridge is tall and proud, stood with a rod for a spine where Xephos is hunched over, and with the latter stationed in a tight crouch before the former, she wonders how she even got this far.

The space man wields a bright blue sword, with the sharp tip resting on the ground as a pillar of support. Knowing that Ridge doesn't need anything so 'little' as a sword sends ice and biting paranoia down her neck- she even hears the air-quotes in her head, knows how he'd snort and snigger at the idea of 'swords'. Ridge is as close to a God as she knows, and it is he that's staring at her now, with blunt rusty hands pressed to Xephos's hair- he almost grovels at Ridge's booted feet, clutching at the dust-ridden ground.

She can see the god clenching his fists, and the pain that shudders through Xephos is not imagined; he's gritting his teeth even as she watches. The sound he's making under Ridge's iron grip is taught with clicks and whirrs, and the normally bright light from his eyes is dimmed and hazy and dripping with something- a terrified, many-legged thing she remembers from hiding under beds when hissing beasts drew near.

“One second, Nano.” Cutting through the darkness like a lightning strike, she starts at the voice. But giving them one costs her nothing, if only because her allies are dead and- (Lalna and Sjin were dead before she could look, buried under robots and mutants and a blue sword, and even the BlackRock allies, Rythian no doubt trapped once more in a black room and Zoeya both too dangerous and not dangerous enough to be kept alive, Nilesy lost and Lomadia, oh, Lomadia...) they won't kill her now.

 

She barely moves, barely breathes. It crawls around her like living steam and sweat and heat, overwhelmed by the sensation that she is absolutely outmatched.

(But is she? She's still alive, after all.)

 

Ridge does not quite fall to his level, but he crouches before Xephos as the alien rises to his knees and they stare into each other's eyes.

It only takes a second to dismiss the thought that it looks faintly intimate, almost loving, because then Xephos is shuddering in on himself to speak.

(They don't match- Xephos's eyes are the stronger, and she can barely see the brown of Ridgedog's in the light of sickly blue.)

“They died.” It's the first thing she hears Xephos saying in the New World tongue, not polluted by guttural screeches, and it rasps and dries up dead against her ears. “I- I promised- I told him I'd-”

Nano doesn't need to ask who. The siege of the facility had lead them all through Clone Containment, and she'd seen Xephos at his most vulnerable there, when high walls towered over a hundred different dead faces.

Honeydew's master clone was motionless and too new, and Xephos's crumpled form before it had spoke realms.

(Rythian had fought him directly, calmly battling against seething rage she's not sure was totally natural. He'd come close, magic cracking in the air and flux crawling through the facility, up through Xephos's sword and into his sputtering eyes. But Rythian had lost when the sword plunged through his torso, Xephos roaring orders into an earpiece and the vats locked down, only for another wave of assailants to flood him, and-

All dead. All of them, Lalna and Sips and Sjin, Lomadia and even Alsmiffy, though she didn't have even the first idea about how he'd gone about it. How he'd killed even the unassailable... They are lost to her, branded into her and bright-white-hot in her head.)

(He'd been crying- The alien had tears made of light and ash.)

 

“Shh,” Ridge's fist tightens incrementally in grasping convulsions, until Xephos is clutching his head.

It's obvious, even from across the room, that he's biting back screams.

“Spaceman, shh,” The fist pulling at the crouched man turns to a palm, and for a split second the whirring and crunching sounds stop.   
Like a shot, light floods from Ridge's hand into the room, straight into his head.

The whole room flashes in a lightening strike, it only takes a twist of her head to try and get a good look at the hundreds of platforms littering the floor- and in less than ten seconds he stands and shifts to guard Ridge's back, standing with a pose so arrogant it's as if he's guarding crown jewels.

A footsoldier.

(There's a desperate suspicion in the back of her head that says 'Again,' because nobody deserved brainwashing, not even him.)  
“Pity,” murmurs Ridge. He almost looks sad too, almost regretful, and his fingers reach behind him to trace the gold trim marking Xephos's dusty valour. He sighs, but his face is taut. “He made an excellent Commander.”

 

She hates him, brightly and savagely, not even sure if she means Xephos or Ridge himself- because who cared, really, her friends are dead and the people in front of her seemed to lack even a shred of morality. What was there left but that, now, at the end of it all?

 

“What did you do to him?” Nano's voice is dry even to her own ears, and her head feels clumsy, crowded with questions. Ridge looks at her properly, surveying her form and she feels his gaze, a brand against her skin. Short and lithe, and now towered over by these two mad men, (Alsmiffy had been taller and an ally but now he was dead or in containment and didn't- couldn't- matter to her anymore) and only now meeting her eyes for the first time.

 

“What did I do to him?” His laugh is shallow and deep at once and it presses in from all around her. “I made him mine.” She narrows her eyes at his innuendo and wry grin. “He had a strange heart, and I put power in it- nothing more than his natural capability, nothing less. Oh, don't look so scandalised-” The man behind him seems to loom, far broader and taller and more intimidating, eyes over-bright enough that the blue light clung gently to the walls of the huge, empty room. “He's always been a military man at heart. He never meant much to you, anyway.”

“Yeah, but- But he did mean things to Lalna, didn't he? And to Honeydew? And what about Sjin and Sips?” There's no room for old prejudices here, when a god and an alien stand opposite her readying for battle, so Sjipsco is ally enough. Ridge rips his face open in a snarl.

“Well, Lalna's under control, Sjin's nearly dead, Sips has been under Xephos's jurisdiction for a while, and Honeydew was-” Tombstone teeth. That's all she can think of, Ridgedog has a face like a grave, and Xephos behind him has eyes as bright as a sun. “Well, Honeydew was taken care of by Xephos himself.”

She glances desperately behind her, back at the huge doorless opening she walked through not 10 minutes before. Lomadia, maybe-

“She's dead too, little girl,” And she wants so badly to kill him- remove him from existence and end this, end the games and this facility and its experiments, with compliments, because they have-to-be-stopped. “And you will be soon, as well.”

She grits her teeth and shifts- foot to foot with the noise thundering through the silent space.

“This? Who's fault-” she gestures to her shivering arms, numb and indigo even in the darkness. “Whose fault was this? Did he do this? Or did you?”

“There's flux in your blood, Nano. Who do you think?”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

A silence.

“Huh, yeah. You're right.”

“And who- who ordered the invasion?”

 

They'd come in the early hours of the day, sky still pale and almost transparent against the rising sun. Robots, thousands of them, headed from the vast building with a huge round door, and before any of them knew it their powerful friends were gone.

Lalna, Sjin, Rythian, stolen from their beds and bound together with manacles. Lomadia, and Alsmiffy, everyone that stood a chance by themselves. 'Divide and conquer' rings in her head, a gun-shot made of shrapnel and stirring fear.

(She doesn't know what happened to Strife, but she suspects he's dead too, suspects much the same of Littlewood, Nilesy, Strippin, Panda, Turps- oh, God, all of them-)

So she'd gone to get them back, intercepted and decimated the machines, and then-

And then she'd found her army, and started a war.

 

Ridge smiles, and it almost seems genuine. “That had both nothing and everything to do with me, I'm afraid. I hear my control starts to... get to you after a while.” He flicks gently at Xephos, who doesn't even breathe, doesn't even blink, in reaction. “But I'm afraid I have a war to win, Nanosounds, and since your faction is already down, I'll have to let Xephos here take care of you.” He waggles his eyebrows in jest and she chokes on her hatred, because he knows and it was him, he put the taint into her bones.

“Don't you dare, you cowardly-!” But then he's gone, disappearing in a wisp of dust and a whispered word.

Xephos- falls to his knees- screams -clutches his head.

 

The room drops into the fleeting dark-light flashes of his eyes, and she doesn't dare speak over his whimpers and clicks. She wishes for a moment that she was better, that she wasn't so alone (everyone is dead) and that Xephos had been stronger, stronger than this.

How dare he be so weak.

But Xephos is crouched on the floor and making soft noises she can barely hear, and weakness is so inherent in his form she can scarcely begrudge him for it. Her footsteps are lighter than usual, tapping at the ground to avoid the heavy, rumbling sound. She puts out a hand to try and stop the tremors-

(She knows it won't end well. She knows, but Xephos looks as weak as he ever has, and everyone else is dead, and there's nobody to power the clone machines. She cannot beat him, she doesn't think, but it might be worth a try.)

He lets her touch him, lightly on his back.

(She doesn't say a word, please God, let this work-)

He shudders under her, clicks and whirrs blurring through him, and the light shooting from his eyes juddering in time with his blinks.

He's a child, a desperate animal caught in a trap.

(She doesn't even breathe.)

She moves her hand, gently, to a light press and-

He... relaxes. Falls loose under her hand, the whimpering slows-

“Xephos, I-”

He's up, snapped around as if she's trying to pet a creeper or a wild wolf, his spine cracking (a stepped-on twig, crushed to pieces) and his eyes blazing, a sun in their sockets that she's never seen.

Like there's a star in his head and he can't bear it.

“Xephos, please-”

He snarls at her.

“I've heard enough pleas, these days, Nano. I've heard enough.” His snarl falls to a grimace falls to a sob. “Please, I've, I've heard enough-” She backs away and puts her hands to her sword, every inch conditioned for danger and every inch not equipped to deal with this. “I did it all, I could do it- I promised I could do it, bring us home, I promised-”

It spills from him like the light of his eyes, and she doesn't dare breathe.

“I know, Xephos,” He pulls his shaking hands to his shaking face as she watches. “I know.”

He rears and starts when she steps back.

“I-” He judders and shakes and the light seems to flicker and burn.

She turns and runs.

 

(There's a moment when she could have crouched next to him, wait to die, and finish it all slowly and peacefully. It would have been nice, she thinks. It would have been nice.)

(There's a moment when she could have plunged a sword through his chest, and finished it. She thinks that would have been dishonest, somehow. This has to end some other way than that.)

 

He's on her almost instantly, sword pulled from it's scabbard in a single deadly motion, with stardust trailing behind it and a faint red tinge that's probably the blood of her friends. She's still running but he's right there, too tall and too broad, the light of his eyes sparking the way into view.

He's right there.

 

She remembers Sjin and Sips, and knowing nothing, and then a shock of existence, and then Lalna. She remembers Lalna and running from things and always being curiously both under and over-equipped, and she remembers him leaving for new places and old places. She asks him where he goes, and he says 'Xephos-places' with a laugh on his face but steel in his eyes. She remembers a faint stretch at the corners of her memory, as if there's something restrained but vicious tapping at the flat-white-face of her consciousness.  She remembers falling and losing and then- the new world. The tempered quiet thing stopped being tempered and quiet, and suddenly Xephos's name is burnt into everyone she meets.

 

So as he swings his sword (how he has the strength to throw his weight behind it is as beyond her as the glowing of his eyes, but suddenly she doesn't care about the old age of this mad man) she brings her own up for just long enough to hear a smash that sounds throughout the room as a thunder bolt- as an asteroid, and then she's running again, footstep on footstep on desperate footstep, because she needs to escape him, needs to rescue whatever was left of her warriors, her battalion-

He's always half-a-step-behind, rounding corners with her and trying desperately to slice his sword into her guts.

“Don't test me, Nano,” He doesn't even sound winded, and they tear past yet another row of poorly lit mechanics, a hurricane of legs and her panted breath and sharp edges. “Don't.”

She races forward, never quite ahead, but they near the steps and the door far faster than she'd like, and she'll have to do something, anything to get past this madman (dead man)  that was Lalna's friend-

She sprints to the bottom step, braces her weight and twirls to shove her sword into Xephos's face-

“Test you?” She grits her teeth and snarls, because she's putting what feels like her whole existence into this one swing, and sword-fighting with Lalna has never felt more distant than right now, when she needs it. “Never.”

 

He meets her blade (just, it's a victory-), arms twitching under the strain of her high-ground. His snarl meets hers, and the light of the room sours into an intolerable acidic haze, plunging in and out of blue sun whenever he blinks, and her life is so weak and so short and so not-bright-enough measured against this man, this thing-

He pushes forward, and they whirl about each other in a dance. Graceful, perhaps, but she can barely feel the artfulness about it all under cries of 'everyone is dead'- he swings and she parries, panting under deafening echoes, and when she swings he catches it with barely a thought. He goes for her side, and she nearly stumbles (clumsiness has never seemed like a worse thing, never seemed quite like a vision of a sword embedded in her skull before), but instead skitters up a step to bring her sword up and over, and then down, down onto his head, and if this fails she won't recover because he's faster-

He moves but it is not enough.

She winces at the noise but shoves it further- His shoulder is caught under the chop and his arm is almost- almost- rent from it's socket, blood everywhere, even as he reaches out under screams and a lost limb to grab at her ankle and pull, scratching and grasping to end her-

She falls forward and rips her longsword from the new gap in Xephos's collarbone, to hit at his side as he slips to his knees and still, still tries to scratch and rend her in any way he can-

Oh god, she's not meant for this, this much blood coating the floor and this much noise hitting from every direction, and amidst the din she vaguely recognises that the flux is stirring within her. His blood paints the floor a colour she can't even see, because his eyes are shuttering open and closed, and everything is a light show of violence, his arm not even hanging limply but still in use to try and claw at her legs.

She kicks him away, and this time his submission is absolute or he dies.

And he knows it. She hums Lalna's words- 'Xephos-places'- to herself under her breath and tries not to wince.

He falls to the floor. Again.

 

(The judders and cracks and light-shows thrown out from his chest and heart and wounds are bright and painful to look at, and she almost has the feeling he'd end up like this- bloodied and bright and deader than before- even if it had been someone else here.)

 

He chokes.

“I- I promised-”

“I know.” Nano is numb.

She's so numb, abruptly but totally, and for a brief second it almost frightens her, because there are two options here, and she's not sure what to do.

 

(In one world, she makes the other choice, and she crouches down next to his twisted visage. “Your promises have never meant much, have they, commander?” He looks up at her with wide and haunted eyes embedded deep down in his skull, and she removes his head from his shoulders in a single glorious chop, and doesn't look back as the light flickers about the floor.

When she walks up the steps and out the door, the light keeps burning and the spaceman's convulsions get quieter until she cannot hear them at all. But she doesn't do that, because she's vicious but she's not that.)

 

The material bites into her fingers as she rips the leather strap from his chest and ties it around his wrists, and makes her decision.

She'll kill his master-clone, and trap a new, weaker and near-dead version in there, missing a shoulder and so much blood.

He'd still be alive, and far less dangerous. (Oh, please forgive her, Lalna, Sips, Sjin, Lomadia- Honeydew, not yet spawned after- oh, forgive her, if he stays like this and she's killed him for real-)

 

She wrenches him to his feet and after he mutters a quiet: “I'm sorry,” he snaps back into the clicks and guttural crunching she recognises now as a language.

“Yeah, well. You should be.”

 

Her home was torched. By machines, by AI, fake-things with no heart or minds and sent at the call of the commander. The new world and the old one, ripped to tatters and spread about the world in a way she can't even comprehend- it's gone, though, and the thought sticks enough to singe her with bitter acid.

 

He stares at her in disbelief as she braces herself to take ahold of him, but she is far stronger than she looks. Xephos is less heavy than his height would suggest, apparently all visage and no substance, and whilst she doesn't lift him easily, she can drag him after her and along the floor when it called for it, simply enough. His chin either bites into her back if she supports his neck, or lolls forward in a dead-looking drop if she just holds his shoulders. Nano chooses the second and feels no remorse.

 

Dragging him up stairs is easy, through corridors and across the facility, leaving a bloodied trail in her wake, and Testificates murmur at the walls and through screens, because not even YogLabs had been able to weaponise them. She wishes beyond almost everything that the same could have been said for Ridge and the body behind her.

 

(They pass through the front lobby, and Xephos makes a strangled noise. She almost wants to force him into the room that says 'Honeydew's Office', just to see what he does. But she doesn't. She's vicious, but she's not that. It's a mantra in her head before she knows it. She's not that.

Instead she drops him in a heap and investigates herself. Honeydew's tiny room reveals a lot and a little- whatever happened here, he's been shielded, and she hates Xephos both a little more and a little less for it.)

 

He gets heavier as his breathing does, somehow, as if even his spilt blood is resisting her march.

His chatter, the cracking and thunderous whines that leak from him, is endless and painful- She'd never thought it could be so sad, a minor key and a hurricane's wake in one set of vocal cords. It's all she can do to resist the urge to put him out of his abject misery, because at some point The Executioner became more romantic than The Merciful, and his dragging legs remind her that she might be neither, at this point.

Not merciful, never played a part in an execution, just- just...

She runs out of justification, after a while, because whatever he's done it can be fixed.

There's no coming back from this, from a new/old Xephos with a dead-head and a twisted shoulder, so she blanks her mind and drags him head first to the pit of clones.

  


The walls are lined with faces. Some she recognises, and some she doesn't, some young and some older than time.

She breathes and wrenches Xephos along the huge platform, skirting the railings to look for lost friends and fallen comrades.

 

“At least you'll see him again.”

Down the steps- his feet hit every one of them with a crack, and though she knows it hurts he does little more than grunt.

('Little more-' she derides herself, because there is no little about this. She's wiping the old out of existence, and if she succeeds then her new-old-friends are going to flay her, but that won't make it permanent-)

His whole body hits the floor with a thunk, and they walk together.

 

“Which one?” She knows that by now Xephos will be totally aware of her plan.

She shakes him, viciously and deeply.

“B-22,” It's slurred and guttural in her ears.

 

Hauling him to his feet, she leaves the man propped up against a wall with a pool of blood at him toes.

(She expects him to walk, here of all places, with the faces of the near-dead lined up on the wall.)

  


Faces she doesn't recognise, 'Doctors' and 'Professors'. Injustice hits her, again and again, and when their images start to meld into one she hates it, hates herself in that moment. She doesn't know them, but someone did, and now they're here, and not... Wherever else.

Biting her lip, she moves on, and breathes through her nose.

 

Martyn Littlewood is the first face she knows. He looks cold and absent and very dead, but he hadn't been- she doesn't know where he is, if he's passed or if he's alive. She tries not to think about it, not to think about whether the seeds he kept in his pocket are dead under formaldehyde and ice. She moves on.

 

Then- Sips. Sips and Sjin, facing each other-  She bites back a broken, angry laugh at the shining prisons, and smiles a little. Yeah, facing each other in endless death. About right.

 

Xephos has already passed her. He lies in front of Honeydew, but she gives him the time.

It wasn't even really a blessing, it's obvious that whatever's happened here will be branded in the mind of everyone they know until the day they die.

She skips past Honeydew, and moves on.

 

She comes to Ross (nobody called him his other name, one of the few real exceptions to the rule, and even that pointless fact sticks to her like glue) and Trottimus, next, the first peaceful and the second with black open eyes and a weak frown. Alsmiffy's not there, and to some extent she's unsurprised- he was always rather difficult to kill by the sword, and that's all Xephos had had, even at the end. That the two are opposite each other, and that there's a space behind them both that would have let another person join them-

She doesn't breathe, but she does walk over to the Xephos Master-Clone, to stare at him with flint and fire in her eyes.

 

Not quite his fault, really- a pawn of Ridge, a fire only if Ridge were a match. The man in the tube has his eyes barely shut, and he is desperately, desperately sad, pupils under eyelids twitching over towards the figure next to him, and-

 

(The bodies have been cleared away. She hadn't thought they would, had thought that because of the spawning system that they'd be trapped in bodies until- until.

Until Xephos regained control, she supposed. She wonders who cleared them, and wonders where they'd been put.)

 

Feeling pity for him would be easy, for this lonely lonely dead man, but she knows that the world is ending and has ended, that his death (false-death) would hurt him enough, maybe, that he couldn't heal again.

And she thinks, briefly, that they need that respite.

 

They're there for five minutes, staring at figures of the past- but the all-consuming silence is deafening and transient.

“Come on,” and her voice is crisp and stretched, “B-22,”

“I promised him.” He's curled in on himself, face pressed against the metal of Honeydew's prison. “I- I could have saved them, save you all, and-”

“Yes,” she replies. “Ridge does that.” She's known him a while and she's well aware-

“No. No, he doesn't, it was me- the thing is, it's me, it's mine and I can-”

She stares down- she's seized by the urge to end him, to press down on his throat until his eyes go out, because he's mad, now, and what can she fix in the face of this-

(She's not that, She's not that-)

“I can-”

“Why would you? You get to forget, Spaceman, this is easiest on you.”

His ball of limbs tightens. His fingers are vices on his legs.

“That's what scares me.”

 

So she lets him sit there a little while longer.

 

“The- I've got an idea.”

She doesn't reply, because she's busy staring at Lalna's clone.

“Respawn me,” he chokes, “Respawn me and then- I'll convince me, I can kill Ridge, I know I can-”

“Why should I?”

“Huh?” He sounds dead or dying or ill. It might, she realises briefly, have something to do with the blood loss.

(Still not dead, though, not really. A miracle in itself, honestly.)

“Why should I save you? Are you worth that?”

“I can kill him, I can- I- I, I know that I can, I did before, I've killed gods before-”

He's so haunted and dead on the inside she's almost convinced, and very nearly doesn't question that he's killed someone like Ridge in the past. Xephos is old, and she knows it.

“What've I got left to lose?”

 

He stares at Honeydew like the Master-Clone is his lost limb, not the dead one twitching gently at his side.

So she says, “Fine.”

After all, time was of the essence, even given their wasted minutes, and the only real victors in this whole stupid fucking war were the fast and the dead.

 

“Help me, I can't-” She pulls him to his feet at B-22 and then backs off, to watch him stare at himself in the harshest mirror she's ever seen.

“Hello, old friend,” She stays silent. If talking to yourself was a sign of madness, then she's not sure what this was, because she's pretty sure he's already mad, with grief or Ridge or otherwise, and his voice drips with every inch of it. “I- I'm so sorry, I didn't- I could've but I didn't, forgive me, friend,”

He taps at the panel and taps again, bracing his single frail arm against a bannister and making clumsy gestures with his other. “I promised him, and so did you, and we've never been afraid of death, have we-”

He slams his hand on the button abruptly in the middle of a sentence, when she'd expected him to monologue like a movie villain and not like the very real and lost man that's leaning on one arm, and so pale he could fade into the light of his eyes.

 

And there's a fizz and a deafening bang, and he clutches his arm-socket as he crashes to the ground beneath the terminal.

“He's coming. Two minutes.”

 

She's given him a lot, given how much he's taken.

(Sips and Sjin and the Hats, and Rythian, Lomadia and Lalna and Honeydew-)

Giving him a little more feels like no concession.

 

The clone thunders through the hallways on running footsteps and crunching-speech shouts, wearing clothes too old and too new for someone like Xephos, too much like a military uniform for someone wearing a renaissance coat. He almost screams when he sees the new-old Xephos beneath the chamber, and she only understands the ensuing exchange because Xephos is gracious for a madman, and is speaking New World Basic instead of the clicking whirrs that is his language. He should be speaking his own language with himself of all people, and it's an obviously taxing concession- Xephos pants and contort with exertion- but somehow she doesn't feel particularly grateful.

 

“Not... Not dead?” Says the clone. It's enough to let her know that Xephos left out some important parts of New World grammar to make room for- what? Was that even how it worked, taking out one memory in favour of another?

“Not yet. Ridge, he, He-” The original (or as close as she knows when the true original Xephos sits behind glass and ice and formaldehyde not three feet away-) gestures towards Honeydew, and now the clone gapes and his hands tighten into fists, and leans backward.

“Ridge... did this?”

“No, I did.”

The clone seems to think on that, before: “Ridge, did this.”

“Yes,” says the other. “I can't-”

“Ridge kill, you want I?” Clone-Xephos points to the other's bloodied socket. “Arm because, you can't?”

The old nods.

Neither mention her role in the battle, and though she knows she is responsible for it, she feels no regret for this.

“I'll kill Ridge.” She has no doubt that he could, in this moment, when his arm is as intact as his mind, and she absolutely in favour of it. He'll die by someone's hand, and she doesn't care whose anymore. “I'll die but I'll kill him.”

“Wait, let me-” The Xephos she knows wrenches himself to his feet (stumbles forward like a dying stag), and before she knows it the Clone is across the room, supporting him from under his arms as he sinks them both down to the floor.

The original looks infinitely more haunted and dead.

“Ready?”

The clone does not ask what he means, and the original digs his fingers into the others head and screams, loud and bright and painful and she has to cover her ears-

Light ejects from his old trembling chest and tumbles into the new-version, and the light dims and dims until she can barely see it and then-

 

The original Xephos dies as she watches. He falls still, still gripped in the clone's- no, now just Xephos's- prison-arms, and the spectacle of seeing the light leave his eyes makes her jolt.

She'd thought, somehow, that he didn't even need to be alive for that. That he'd survive forever, at least in his eyes.

The new drops his body unceremoniously, and it falls to the ground with a thunk as he steals the elder's sword and pointedly leaves the ripped sheath.

 

“Nano,” His voice catches at her attention, and this is very much a different man to the one that just died. Less haunted, younger, accented with youth, even- cold. This one is cold where the other was tortured and hot in death.“Could you direct me him?”

 

She glances weakly at the corpse, blinks and then says: “Yes.”

(She knows where he'll be.)

And then they start running.

 

(She runs. Xephos-mark-two skates on darkness and stars, and whatever it is that he uses to spark off teleports, and she gets the terrible consuming feeling that this new man could outrun her in his sleep. She's numb, the nerves in her feet are as dead as her prospects, and she doesn't need to pant because breathing is hard enough.)

 

“What did Xephos do to you?”

They run alongside each other, and the spaceman looks at her strangely.

“He gave me his star,” as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And... He gave me his bit of Ridge.”

And then they keep running because she doesn't want to think about this alien's crimes, and how much of that was in response to literally having part of a malevolent God in his chest.

 

The trip takes five minutes of flat-out running, six at most, but it feels like hours of endless minutes in this company. Skidding around corners and slipping on marble floors, with hands out to brace on cracked glass.

She gets the inherent feeling that this man is not only not attached to this world, like Xephos had been before, but now is not even attached to his own limits.

The alien does not even seem to touch the ground.

She runs and so does he.

 

(She remembers later, that she'd meant to trap him and then respawn the others. She didn't and it hangs over her for a very long time.)

 

They head to Live Experimentation.

 

Sheets of metal hang heavily across the entrance- it's wide and thick, made of a more durable material to contain experiments that were dangerous and- well, alive. The door is set deeply into the wall but opens easily when she pulls, Xephos a soldier at her shoulders as he had been at Ridgedog's.

  


The room is vast, dead and open, ceiling unsurmountable but walls strangely enclosed. A bird-cage of metal sheets, and Ridge is nowhere to be seen.

The lights are off and it's so dark, she has to wait for her eyes to catch on.

A line of computer terminals line up against the wall with the door, framed by the empty space across the centre, and then... A row of what looks like display cases, lit dimly by a glowing thing trapped in their ceilings.

Xephos's steps follow just behind her.

 

The feeling that rises in her chest sparks, steel striking against the flint of her heart- her friends are alive.

All the beauty in the world doesn't quite match her elation. Yet-

 

(Yet there are circles of hell that cover this, that detail in excruciating finery exactly what should be done to the man that did this, exactly how he should be tortured forever-)

 

They are in cages.

 

Lalna's strapped to the wall, the robot arm pasted over his flesh crackling at the air; blood spills out of his hand where it's shoved into the wall- through the wall, it sits between this room and whatever's behind them and he's screaming, the weight of the facility sitting on his wrist. He doesn't look up from the ground.

Sjin sits on a chair, the only one of the five to do so. He sits on a chair and he is dead save for the rise-fall drumbeat of his chest, and she has absolutely no doubt in that moment that Ridge would want to keep him alive. For something like his buildings and ingenuity, maybe, but not his cunning or his sharp lies. Sjin is drugged out of his mind and lolling in his manacles, Sips is nowhere to be seen-

“This isn't fair,” murmurs Nano, the walls rolling in in grey shadows. The beginning and home have never felt so far away, and aching with the need to run or check on the man standing at attention next to her (he shifts like her control-chain is tight enough to choke), she keeps looking, and pulls her eyes back up.

Lomadia is next, and she looks almost free- trapped in an iron cage. Nano resists the urge to scream and cry because Lomadia rattles and bangs the doors of her prison but somehow cannot see her, can't see her at all, and this prison her friend is in stretches far further than anything visible.

Lomadia isn't even dangerous, not compared to the others, but-

Alsmiffy is behind glass as thick as her arm, completely sealed and filled with a faintly coloured gas, brown-red like rusty blood.

She almost doesn't notice that parts of him just fall away, before being replaced by more of whatever it was he was made of-

Oh, god, what happened here, what happened to the old world of digging things and learning to farm...?

She can barely look at Rythian. He's chained with manacles that glow, purple and clenching onto his puckered dark skin, and she's so focused on it she barely notices his face, the mask is off and his face splits in an Enderman scream, and he flashes forward and back in a how Nano can't bear, can't look at without her heart twisting in something she doesn't quite feel.

“What is this?” She sounds numb, even to herself. The look Xephos gives her is empty and sad, hard and jagged in the wrong places. “What did they do...?”

“'They?'” Xephos looks dead, still, this new version is as the first in that way at least. “You mean me. Ridge and I did this.” He taps at his heart and sighs-

Rythian can see them, then, and he screeches, a not-noise amongst the cacophony she knows as the End.

She's never been, but she suspects that out of the people in this room, she's the only one.

 

“Rythian, calm down-” but maybe he can't see them, just feel them, because it's obvious he can't hear her voice under the shouts. “Rythian,” Nano turns, almost without thinking. Xephos is staring at Lalna next to her, wide and absent eyes unmatched by the other prone man. “Xephos, we have to make him stop, Ridge will come and we aren't ready...”

 

Silence, charged and shifting. Xephos glances back at her before moving further back into the darkness of the room.

“Yes, we are.”

 

A deafening crack, an earthquake symphony, and-

 

“Oh, did he not kill you?” Ridge is a lightly accented disease, and one she has contracted. A mutation, a cancer, and his voice is about as welcome as one. “That's... annoying, I guess. Not unanticipated, but annoying. Oh well.”   She whirls around and feels her shoulders heave up in defence.

“How dare you? How could you do this, you monster?” She spits it and hopes it burns as much as the acid she's imagining.

“It's quite easy, really.” He smiles as he says it, effectively grinning down at the words she'll use on his death warrant. “You just realise that it's all just shells. Even these ones,” He is clear and precise in movements, pointing directly at the spot between Lomadia's eyes. “They're clones, Nano. Not truly people, just kind of... Ghosts, I guess.”

“Are you trying to tell me they aren't real?”

“No, I didn't say that. They're as real as you or I.” He pauses, cocking his chin, and the blood thrums in her veins in a sluggish march. “Well, that might be... They're 'real', anyway. They still hurt. That's kind of the point.”

 

(She'll kill him for this.)

 

“And what about Xephos?  Did you... anticipate that?” If she could burn things with her eyes she would, if she could wipe him down to a faint mark on the floor she would. If she could destroy him, maim him, wipe him from existence, she would.

He smiles, and she twists on the inside, curled into a little ball deep inside her chest.

“What, the thing where you're not dead?” It's a laugh, she thinks, the thing that falls from his chest. It scuttles about on the floor, a peal of laughter per creeping footstep. She catches on in less than a second- that no, that wasn't what she'd meant- she'd meant the living weapon stood across the room- (Ridgedog was missing some of the facts) “No, I didn't know he'd do that. Did you, Nanosounds? Eh, it's just a distraction. Who cares?”

 

(She'll kill him. 'Who cares?' Her friends had, and now the only hope she had of their respawn was wielding a sword like a walking stick, hidden behind a god.)

 

“I think,” Xephos rumbles, it resonates in her chest like he's shouting into her back.

Ridge whirls around, apparently shocked- whether by his presence or his words, she doesn't know.  Xephos is still trapped in the shadows, but a faint creeping glow has shifted around him, white and navy blue, looking like electricity and a burning bright chemical Lalna had once forged into a sword, but she can't see his face. “That maybe you underestimate me. I think,” A step that clangs at the walls, and he's lit up, and the miasma ensnaring him flares into light. “I think that you underestimate her.”

Ridge looks like a burnt moth set alight.

A second, split and shining and infinitely harsh.

And then Ridge snarls.

“What did you do?!” Wide eyes and open maw, and far less terrifying than she anticipated. He looks scared and... weak. (A victory.) “Xephos, Xephos, What did you do?!”

 

(It feels like miles away, but just behind her Rythian's screams start up again. She hadn't even noticed they'd stopped, but now they're hostile, the urge to kill leaking from him like liquid End.)

 

“What the fuck did you do to make a-?! How did you make yourself a-”

Xephos shrugs, and doesn't blink.

“YogLabs has projects.”

“Not ones I don't know about.” Ridge twirls back to her, leaning forward and shoulders wrenched high against his neck. “How could you allow this? He's the only one able to operate those machines- They won't respawn, you'll have lost.”

 

She squares and braces and breathes deeply, stares him straight in the eye. “I know.”

 

(She hadn't. She hadn't known he'd die for real- That he'd be the only one able- )

(Too late. Too late now. Better to end it all, burn it all, and live cautiously forever.)

 

His jaw clenches as she watches, brows creased together. He turns yet again, back mostly to her- she can just make out the side of his face to see his whole face contort.

“And what about Honeydew? Are you ready to give that up? And for what?” He throws his hands up. (It's probably meant to look powerful, but with Rythian's screams as the backing she can't help but think he looks like a petulant child.) “To pretend you're back home, a billion miles away? To forget that he ever existed? Are you that desperate to see different stars again?  Xephos, there is callousness and then there's this-”

It's obvious she's missing something. Something to do with this old planet she keeps hearing about, but she bites it back to swallow the curiosity and hate bubbling in her throat.

“My star- my old home is not for you to think.”

Ridge starts, and she can see him turning the notion over in his head. It's obvious when he understands that this isn't the old Xephos, puts the short sentences and lost vernacular together in his head with the burning glow.

“Ah. So you- he-” She catches a flash of something in his face there. She's not sure what it is but it hits her hard in the chest. “He just moved his star to you, huh? A little baby clone, all new and with fragments of language...” Ridge is bigger now too. The shadows start to coalesce about him, stick to his bones and flare out. He stretches and throws out words in a language she doesn't understand, and she only understands the fountain of murky light because Xephos mirrors his words, this time in the only language it seems the previous Xephos left him with.

“'Murderer-?!' They called me 'traitor', but-” She gathers vaguely that he must mean his presence on this new world, a title from his planet. “How is the blame for me and not-?”

 

Ridgedogs's smile is back. He gestures, in a single sweeping movement, to the trapped bodies behind her, manacles and chains and hands jammed through the wall.

(Rythian still screams. It aches and rubs against the flat of her mind, her whole being bristling against it.)

“They're not my handiwork, Xephos. It's too practical. And, what about...” Ridge digs about in his pocket, posture shifting abruptly. He digs a thing out, and delicately places it in his palm-

Xephos inhales sharply.

The thing- its dark purple, small and rounded, a little pebble resting in the shadowed sea of Ridge's fingers- glows at a point on it's top, and when Ridge taps it, there's a tiny 'click'.

And nothing happens.

“Wait wait, let me-” He slaps it on his trousers and straightens back up, taps it once more-

Honeydew fills a spot of air in the middle of the room. He's bruised and bloody and instead of bone there's exposed wiring-

Xephos slices through the image with his sword in a motion that comes from nowhere she can see, and returns the blade right back to the scabbard on his belt, wearing anger all over his face. Ridge looks aloof now, superior and smug, and eyes all ablaze with grave-dirt light.

“Wow, that's kind of rude.” He pockets the thing with a flick of his fingers and a smile.

 

“Kill you.” Xephos's voice is beyond rough now.

 

“Yes,” and she feels so very outmatched again. They're like titans, and though she might be the monster-under-the-bed after all of this (the one who survived), these people- these gods, they're pillars of power (Xephos's light show and Ridge's shadows make her eyes ache) and frightening revenge. They're terrifying and the fear grounds her as much as it makes her desperate for some salvation, any salvation. (It's selfish in the face of the prisoners behind her, but Ridge is still talking-) “I'm sure you will.”

“Stay dead.”

“What,” Ridge smiles bitterly, and she has to restrain herself very deliberately, because baiting either of them is a suicide note now- “Like your Dwarven friend? You didn't even watch his petty death, friend-”

Nanosounds feels the torrent of light and energy before she sees it. It sticks to her skin and rips at her hair, and sits in her chest like a dead rotting thing, with too many eyes and too many limbs. Xephos roars, a geiger-counter amplified a billion times resounding out of his chest- it looks like it's been set on fire by stars, dripping with white-blue flames that burn her eyes more than his coat.

“Blood on your hands, Ridgedog, I am not toy.”

“Oh, yes you are.”

And then they're flying at each other, Xephos heaving like a wild animal with iron for shoulders and a barrel chest of steel that she's not sure he had before. He rips the sword up, brandishing it and bounding forward, a wildebeest, an ox, a deadly charging thing, but before she knows it the blue of Ridge's coat has disappeared and Xephos is careering straight for her-

Oh, God, please let her not die like this, under a loss and death and this dead man-

 

He screeches to a surprisingly nimble halt ahead of her braced form.

(Breathe, oh thank christ for this and all her little victories today-)

He looks at her with eyes that blaze- but that are almost kind. “Save them,” His voice is cracked and clicking, still resonating from his screeches, and she feels so indebted to her hatred of this man that she does. She turns to one side and works on freeing the people behind her.

That she has to put their lives in order is more of a sign of the shrapnel that tears up the walls around her than anything.

 

They swirl about each other- Xephos can fly now, apparently, and the white-blue thing that covers him drips as if he's covered in flux, in star-flux, it falls off him but disappears at the floor- Who is this man, who- what are these people-?

(She starts with Lomadia, because a simple cage won't keep her out, and she doesn't know how she'd even begin on the others-)

The sword strikes shock through the ground. The dance brings them up and up, and soon they crash to ceiling and are tearing through that as easily as they tear through each others flesh-

What is this, how can- Blood falls from Xephos in starlight and dust made of atoms, and from Ridge in flux, in vis and a gas she doesn't want to make out that drips silver onto the blue blade- what has happened to them-

Screams are all about her, Lalna's awake and looking up with wide eyes but the noise isn't him. Alsmiffy and Rythian, one screaming in New Basic tongue and the other sounding almost as unearthly as the two beings that shoot up, but then the leverage gives, and Lomadia's out and hugging her from behind-

“It's you, oh, thank you, fucking hell, I-” There's no time to listen, because the two are heading down again, striking at each other and swooping near, on acid and silver residue.

The clicking, the amplified tick of a broken clock is so loud, it overshadows the calls and creaks of Rythian's split-open mouth, and Ridge, she realises too late, is aiming for them, aiming right at her friends, and she raises her sword to help-

Yet another screech, but this one is shrill and human. The spaceman moves- he moves, one moment he is behind Ridge and the next he is in front of them, sword held aloft to catch the blade-

The clang makes Lomadia's ears bleed. She notices absently that Lomadia does nothing about it, that the blood trickles gently down her face and that they are so outmatched, what did they do to themselves? She can't get it out of her head, and it rings with an intensity not matched even by their shouts and Ridge's manic laughter, What did they do to themselves to get this way, what did they do...?

Why did they do it?

Rythian is starting to tear himself from his cage, flashing and reforming just outside his prison, (the purple haze is nothing compared to the silver-blue-yellow-red light-show above them, nothing compared to falling and shuddering stardust-) and Alsmiffy is breaking himself down, reforming into something better, so she shatters the glass with a pole she grabs from her pack and hopes the gas doesn't kill them all.

Sjin is a deadweight, and something that looks like glitter sticks to his skin.

(It's probably blood somehow, turning blood to stardust would not be beyond this Xephos, she doesn't think-)

It's Lalna she rescues next, grabbing a metal pole back up, and jamming it into the thin metal/concrete wall that houses his arm. The panelling in the other is fried and hangs useless and sparking, so she pushes and tries to pry it away-

 

(When a split second of silence occurs, when the beings stop crashing upwards and the deafening cracks stop for a moment of calm respite, she becomes startlingly aware of the Endermage's screech, Lalna's desperate pained shouts, Lomadia's howls and Alsmiffy's gentle hum that sounds like a lament for something he shouldn't have seen-

But then they move through yet another floor, far, far above, and the sounds resumes and she can pretend it's not happening.)

 

Lalna jerks under her grip, gesturing vaguely to a hidden red button on his other, free arm with his nose. Before long, the metal is alive and pulling with her, and his shouts are harder to ignore.

 

When Xephos starts talking, she stops breathing.

“How dare you.” It starts as a rainstorm, destructive but far from devastating, but then- “To my facility?” He speaks with words out of place, too stressed in places they shouldn't be. “To my friends?”

“Your friends?” Ridge is incredulous and demanding and somehow fearful- she would be too, because apparently whatever they have done in this Lab (she'll destroy it) it has created a new God, a new being of Ridge's ilk with stardust for blood and so much revenge she can barely look up at them. “Xephos, I'm your friend- These people-”

“He let his shoulder cut off for 'these people', they are important.” She can't see Ridge's reaction, but would so like to see his face at the fragmented sentences. “He could kill her and did not, they mean something,” Suddenly there's rain, rain floods the room and drops on her face from a hundred floors above.

(She can still hear them, clear as a bell, and Xephos is shouting down.)

 

They've breached the ceiling.

 

“They're not worth this, Xephos! You killed him yourself, we can still respawn him-”

The noise Xephos makes is beyond the sky. It sounds out above the rain and low-level din that swamps the facility, and she bites her lip as Lalna comes free and clings to her like a child-

 

“Don't lie to me Ridgedog, I could never-”

Oh, Xephos-

(Oh, selfish bastard, ordered an army to their door-)

She knows enough.

(She bites her lips and for a moment she has to scrunch her eyes up, even as Lalna hugs her.)

“Yes. You could.”

 

The rain pastes Lalna's hair down onto his face, eyes wide and wet with rain and blood and stardust from the sky. He stares upwards and is so lost she grabs him into a tight hug, wrestling his gaze from the Gods and focusing it on the floor.

“We'll get out, Lalna, don't worry. When he dies-” He flinches under her. “No, we can respawn him, it's fine, it'll be fine.” He doesn't move, and she has to steel herself, because there are times to use people's other names, and this is not one, but- “Duncan. We need to help them, and Xephos can take care of himself.”

She doesn't know how true it is, but Lalna moves, avoids her gaze. He wrenches himself up to glance at Alsmiffy and Rythian before studying Sjin, pulling at his eyelids and shining the glow of his robot-arm into Sjin's pupil as best he can to check the dilation.

Lomadia works on pulling shards of thick glass out of the way of Alsmiffy's steadily strengthening form- he stands as a mass of material, not even bound together by clothes anymore.

She has to help Rythian.

 

They scream, far, far above her.

So does Rythian. He snaps in and out of the bars, through and forward his prison into the room at large, but he screams- the manacles glow purple and pucker the skin as she watches. It goes white under the metal- if it's even metal, if the white is even his skin- and it bubbles under the skin like it's beyond heat-

She reaches out, meets his eyes, and grabs hold.

They aren't hot. They're cold, chillingly so, as if they've been kept in a freezer- faintly icy, they feel like they're dripping.

Rythian trips back and forth, wild-eyed and harshly corded. He sounds like ringing ears and a million tyre-squeals, snapping in and out of her fingers again and again and again.

“Waaaaaater.” It's more a plea than anything. A screech and cry and nails-on-blackboard shout.

His dark skin ripples between her grasping fingers.

“Do you need-”

“Get it offffffff!!!”

“Rythian-”

Rythian’s face splits in two and he jumps desperately beneath her, even as she snaps a pin out of her hair and scrabbles with it on the shallow join of the cuff.

They come apart- but slowly, and Rythian snaps back and forth and jostles them back together, she has to keep trying again and again.

"Rythian, please-"

When they finally come away, Nano careers back, landing on her back with the sudden force of it.

Rythian is dripping something deep and purple and Nano can feel it in her bones, that they have something in common but nothing on the two above them, that there's something like a kindred spirit here as the flux in her blood swirls and snarls-

Rythian looks about ten feet tall, and he's screaming and snapping back and forth above her, glaring up at Ridge and Xephos.

"Rythian-"

Suddenly Rythian is staring down and snapping at her, and for god's sake, she does NOT have time for this.

She lets the flux stir around her bones and let's it push her upwards, her tainted eye glaring as the other one sits lax amongst the swirling purple. Rythian stumbles back as she pulls herself up.

"We do not have time for this."

Rythian snarls at her, mangled teeth spread wide and open and face splitting and snapping into two parts, slamming together and screaming.

It shocks her for a second, but she's been through a fucking lot today, and she's not about to let Rythian, of all people, stop her now.

So she roars back.  

She can feel the flux, it courses through her and runs up her hair- she feels a hundred feet tall, something animal and entirely unearthly, and when she roars she can tell what Rythian must be seeing- gaping, purple maw, sharp teeth and glowing eyes- and she almost, almost revels in it.

The flux tells her to snatch forward, caress and snap his face into three whilst he's still shocked, but. Really.

Enough have died today.

 

She forces the low, melodic groans of the flux back down into the box; lets it keep one eye, because she thinks it's gone anyway- snapped out from the blinding light of Xephos.

Rythian looks like he's been punched.

She has a second thought, and gives her voice to the swirling mass as she speaks- "Enough. We're leaving."

The sounds is deep and tremulous, thundering around the two of them even as Rythian flinches. The first hints of rain are hitting him, and it won't be long until he's beyond help.

 

Lalna and Lomadia trudge up behind her, Lomadia with Sjin held against her back and Alsmiffy condensed into a strange, 10 legged thing skittering about at their feet.

Lalna looks shocked- Rythian is almost cowering, neck exposed and eyes big in his skull, sticking out starkly as big as saucers against his dark skin.

"Did you just- did you just win a posturing competition or something?"

Rythian still doesn't know where he is or who they are, because his eyes flick and switch between Nano and Lalna equally, and Nano's heard enough of that brutal history to know that Rythian probably ought not to take his eyes off of Lalna or Sjin at all.

But as Nano goes to speak and Rythian drops his eyes away, still snapping up and down through his bones, there's a crack, and a howl from far, far above them.

 

A deafening crack, a split that seems to rend everything, Rythian is screaming up again and so is she, because the whole thing is coming down- the whole world is collapsing, the walls are coming in.

 

"Out!" She roars, and suddenly they're running, desperately and on tortured limbs, no time to think-

Lomadia stumbles, Sjin's weight making her slow, and for some reason Nano's flux thinks nothing of letting her just pick them both up- they must be quadruple her body weight, but the flux lets her hold them steady against her shoulders and honestly she's not complaining, the flux in her is moving with the footsteps, wants her out just as much as she wants them all out-

 

"B-ut, Xephos-!" Lalna's voice is desperate, and 'Xephos-places' rings through her head, but she pays it no heed- as long as he's running, she can deal with it later.

 

The walls cave in as they round a corner.

 

A huge chunk of metal, corrugated and splitting concrete as the rain starts to flood down, drops down- it nearly hits Lalna, who has to sprint to get away, and they're never going to be able to keep this up, she thinks, they're going to die, and that-

Well, she thinks. That is just completely unacceptable.

 

The flux floods back again, and there's purple everywhere. She's not on her feet anymore she's somewhere above them, and she feels the world around her- feels it keenly, like a numb limb come back and tingling- just move, it moves for her, pushes wall out of the way as it pushes the legs of the people below her forward, ever forward-

 

They will not die today.

  


When they feel the light of day again- the rain has stopped, but the clouds look like they go on for hours- it is not as difficult as she thought to push the flux away. It sits gently on her bones and swirls about her eye socket, but it makes no attempt to force anyone to do anything, doesn't attempt to try and control her.

 

They don't say anything as the reach the lip of the facility, feeling grass on their feet, and the freedom of not-running.

But they keep going- slowly but surely, away and up the mountains, far enough that whatever Xephos and Ridge had turned into, it could not get to them there.

 

Sjin is awake, finally, bleary and able to walk by himself on stuttering footsteps. Lomadia is in by far the best shape, running perimeter when she can to try to keep the others alive. Rythian looks solemn and won't meet her eyes. She doesn't blame him.

Lalna is odd, strangely lopsided and his footsteps are almost as faltering as Sjin's- Alsmiffy is a strange, four-legged thing, trotting on what could be paws but could be hooves.

He had tried his normal shape- tall, dangerous, opaque and aggressive- but he'd not had enough left of himself to create anything resembling that.

He trundles along and Nano tries not to think about if the other boys- Ross and Trott- if they actually survived.

 

When they reach the top of a sharp cliff, and the thunderous blows of the two men fade into faint crackles, they stop. Finally.

  


From far, far away, they watch as the two dance about each other, careering in and out of clouds and debris and-

 

One strikes the other.

 

"Holy shit."

 

Straight through the chest it looks like, ripping right through, and one- Ridge, she prays, please be Ridge- drops down from a mile above the earth and hits the ground with a thwack she can't hear but makes her since anyway.

 

"Holy shit."

 

The other one-Nano can see now that it's Xephos, light dripping down from him against a background of blackened clouds.

And then she realises it isn't light, not like the kind that had spilled from him before-

 

"Holy shit."

 

And Xephos tumbles to the ground.

 

"Nano? What's wrong?" Lalna's voice is stronger now and really, the world is brutally unfair because Lalna is the one person here she wouldn't want to tell, so-

 

"Nothing," she says, and she's certain that Lalna can see the insincerity of it but he does nothing, so she breathes a sigh of relief and bites back tears.

"It's all going to be fine."

 

She looks up at the sky.

"I promise."

 


End file.
